How to Use the Child Smartphone Usage Guideline Calculator
How much screen time is appropriate for a child is one of the most common questions parents ask. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) both publish age-based recommendations for screen exposure, and this calculator compares your child's age and actual daily use against those guidelines to show the excess.
The benchmarks used here follow the general guidance: screen use is not recommended under 18 months except for video chatting with family, ages 2-5 are capped at 60 minutes a day, and ages 6-18 are capped at 120 minutes a day. For example, an 8-year-old using a phone for 150 minutes a day would be 30 minutes over the recommended limit.
If the excess comes out large, trying to cut usage in half overnight is likely to backfire for both kids and parents. Reducing by 10-15 minutes a day while filling the freed-up time with screen-free activities — outdoor play, board games — tends to be more sustainable. Setting family rules together, with parents modeling the same limits, makes the change stick better.
Frequently Asked Questions
We use the age-based recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): 60 minutes a day for ages 2-5, and 120 minutes a day for ages 6-18. Screen use is not recommended under 18 months, except for video chatting.
Cutting back gradually by 10-15 minutes a day, while adding screen-free activities to fill the gap, tends to work better than an abrupt cut.
It's best to exclude video chats with family and only count recreational screen time in the calculation.